{"id":2265,"date":"2024-10-29T10:32:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T10:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/?p=2265"},"modified":"2024-10-29T14:02:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T14:02:59","slug":"comfort-oluwakoya-upholding-black-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/2024\/10\/29\/comfort-oluwakoya-upholding-black-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Comfort Oluwakoya: Upholding Black voices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"544\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2286 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/files\/2024\/10\/Comfort.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><strong>\u201cI want Black and minority ethnic students to know that they belong at Imperial and that there\u2019s a place here for them<\/strong><strong>.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Comfort Oluwakoya is a third year Medical student and is Imperial College Union\u2019s current <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperialcollegeunion.org\/representation\/a-to-z\/black-minority-ethnic-students\">Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Officer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Upholding Black voices<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Comfort was driven to become the union\u2019s BME Officer as she believes it is vital Black students having a seat at the table and she wants to provide a Black role model for new students.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am passionate about social mobility and upholding Black voices. A lot of times I walk into a room, and I am the only Black person in there, and I just think if I wasn\u2019t here, who would be? I want Black and minority ethnic students to know that they belong at Imperial and that there&#8217;s a place here for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Creating a welcoming environment for Black and minority ethnic students<\/strong><\/h3>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2274\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2274\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" class=\"wp-image-2274 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/files\/2024\/10\/processed-70804339-0609-4D00-89DE-EC7A9291C739-002-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"Comfort at the final dinner for Imperial's Global Summer School\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2274\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comfort at the final dinner for Imperial&#8217;s Global Summer School<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Comfort\u2019s main aim as BME Officer is to establish a community across Black and minority ethnic students, creating a welcoming environment and opportunities for networking and socialising. She says that other students can support by turning up to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/icbmenetwork?igsh=cG54ZG1zMm5qeTlj&amp;utm_source=qr\">Imperial BME Network events<\/a> &#8211; everyone is welcome!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBe there to learn more and hold space for other Black and minority ethnic students within the university. Educate yourself on the things that you might do subconsciously or the things that you&#8217;re not aware that you&#8217;re doing, and seeing how you can make Imperial a better environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Celebrating Black heritage and history<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>For Comfort, the purpose of Black History Month is to celebrate Black heritage and history, both in the UK and globally, and how Black people came to be in the UK. \u201cI was born and grew up in Nigeria for the first eight years of my life, so the concept of race was something completely new to me coming into this country. I found the idea of having a Black History Month very strange because every month is Black people month where I come from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, I really appreciate Black History Month because it is very easy to erase Black people in this country as we only make up a small proportion of the population. There\u2019s not that many of us and it is nice to celebrate and focus on us coming together as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2271\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2271\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"wp-image-2271 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/files\/2024\/10\/processed-43A7F1E1-4F23-4DED-9B62-455A0BFEC44F-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"Comfort with fellow student in labs in Royal College of Science building in South Kensington Campus.\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2271\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comfort in labs in Royal College of Science building in South Kensington Campus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3><strong>The privilege of practising medicine<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>With her whole family working in healthcare, Comfort has always had her mind set on medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just beats every other career because of the privilege of practising medicine. Even as a student, I can walk into a room where someone&#8217;s laying on a table and you are honoured with their trust. As a doctor it is great for meeting people and seeing their journey. It is so unique as a career.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Knowing that she wanted to stay in London, Comfort chose Imperial because of its reputation, being a STEMB university and its modern medicine curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI want Black and minority ethnic students to know that they belong at Imperial and that there\u2019s a place here for them.\u201d Comfort Oluwakoya is a third year Medical student and is Imperial College Union\u2019s current Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Officer. Upholding Black voices Comfort was driven to become the union\u2019s BME Officer as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1793,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Comfort Oluwakoya: Upholding Black voices - Imperial people<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/2024\/10\/29\/comfort-oluwakoya-upholding-black-voices\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comfort Oluwakoya: Upholding Black voices - Imperial people\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI want Black and minority ethnic students to know that they belong at Imperial and that there\u2019s a place here for them.\u201d Comfort Oluwakoya is a third year Medical student and is Imperial College Union\u2019s current Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Officer. 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